The day after Valentine's Day, flower bouquets from sweethearts around the world begin to fade. A rose's vibrant red dulls to dried-out brown, and flowers begin to droop. Some say adding a citrus-flavored soda, such as 7-Up or Sprite, or an alcohol like vodka to the vase of water will lengthen the time these flowers remain beautiful.

According to floriculturists, they are right; if the mixture of soda and water is in the correct proportion, a bouquet will remain bright, because the combination provides the flowers with the water and food they need. "The 7-Up formula works really well," says Susan Han, a professor in the plant, soil and insect science department at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Vodka also works as a flower preservative by interfering with the plant's ripening process but it is less practical to use. Cut flowers, like those in a bouquet, are separated from their roots and no longer make food for themselves. Instead, their environment provides everything necessary to keep them fresh. Slightly acidic water travels up the stems to the flowers more rapidly than neutral or basic water, keeping the flowers hydrated and fresh. But in addition to water, plants need sugar for food.This necessary combination of acidic water and sugar describes 7-Up or Sprite, says William Miller, a professor of horticulture at Cornell University. One can of either is loaded with citric acid that lowers the pH (increases the acidity) of the soda and contains about 38 grams of sugar. But, while water and sugar keep the flowers fresh, this mixture also encourages bacterial growth, which can harm the flowers. "So add bleach," Han says. A little bleach kills the bacteria without damaging the flowers.

When brewing this concoction, which is essentially what flower food packets hold, Miller and John Dole, a professor of horticulture at North Carolina State University, recommend one can of water for every can of soda added to the vase. Han, however, prefers a three-to-one ratio of water to soda, along with a few drops of bleach to kill the bacteria.

Vodka has a different effect on a bouquet of flowers: When added to a vase, it preserves them, probably by inhibiting ethylene production, Dole says. Ethylene is a ripening gas emitted by plants that helps them mature. Inhibiting this gas could slow wilting. Vodka, however, is not a very viable preservative. Plantslike many peoplecan only tolerate small concentrations of alcohol, up to eight percent, Dole explains, and 80-proof vodka from the liquor store is 40 percent alcohol. To be effective rather than harmful, the liquor would need to be dilutedInstead, growers use a more effective preservative, silver thiosulfate, which also inhibits ethylene, he says.

Other flower care strategies can help a bouquet stay beautiful. When the flowers arrive home, half an inch to an inch of the stem should be cut off. This prevents air from being sucked into the stem and creating a blockage in the plant's uptake system, Miller says. Also, removing the ends physically removes any bacteria that might be growing there, he adds. Roughly every three days another inch should be cut from the stem bottoms and the bouquet should be placed in a clean vase. "If you wouldn't drink out of your vase, don't be putting flowers in it," Dole advises. After fresh food and water are added to the clean vase, the bouquet should be placed in a bright, cool spot.

No matter what efforts are made, of course, over time the flowers will slowly die. "It is perfectly okay to go through and pluck out the dead flowers," Miller says. That way the remaining bouquet looks bright and pretty.

Sodas like 7-Up and Sprite may keep flowers from a sweetheart fresh but what keeps sweethearts fresh is not yet known to sciencethough vodka and soda might be key ingredients there, too.

Devil's Kettle Falls is in Minnesota's Judge Magney State Park. This is a very unusual, and even mysterious waterfall. As can be seen in the above picture, the river is split in two as it goes over the falls. The section on the right, lands at the base of the falls and continues downstream. The section on the left vanishes into a pothole known as the Devil's Kettle and noone knows where it goes. It is believed that the water makes its way out to Lake Superior by means of underground passages, but the exact details are unknown. They have thrown dyes and logs and other things into the pothole, but apparently nothing ever comes out. If you have ever worried about falling over a waterfall, imagine falling into the Devil's Kettle.

Finding the Falls is easy. The hike to the falls is about one mile. Along the way you will pass the Upper Falls.

Fulcanelli is almost certainly a pseudonym assumed, in the early XXth century, by a French alchemist and esoteric author, whose identity is still debated.[1] The name Fulcanelli seems to be a play on words: Vulcan the ancient Roman god of fire plus El, a Canaanite name for God and so the Sacred Fire.[2] He is also called the Master Alchemist. The appeal of Fulcanelli as a cultural phenomenon is partly due to the mystery that surrounds most aspects of his life and works; one of the anecdotes pertaining to his life retells, in particular, how his most devoted pupil Eugène Canseliet performed a successful transmutation of 100 grams of lead into gold in a laboratory of the gas works of Sarcelles at the Georgi company with the use of a small quantity of the "Projection Powder" given to him by his teacher, in the presence of Julien Champagne and Gaston Sauvage.Fulcanelli was undoubtedly a Frenchman, widely and profoundly educated, and learned in the ways of alchemical lore, architecture, art, science, and languages. Fulcanelli wrote two books that were published after his disappearance in 1926, having left his magnum opus with his only student, Eugène Canseliet. Le Mystere des Cathedrales first edition consisted of 300 copies and was published by Jean Schemit at 52 Rue Laffitte, Paris, France.[3]

Theories about Fulcanelli speculate that he was one or another famous French occultist of the time: perhaps a member of the former Royal Family (the Valois), or another member of the Frères d'Heliopolis (Brotherhood of Heliopolis, a society centred around Fulcanelli which included Eugène Canseliet, Jean-Julien Champagne and Jules Boucher). Canseliet's only student, Patrick Rivière, believes that Fulcanelli's true identity was Jules Violle, famous French physicist.[4] In a 1996 book, samples of writing by Jean-Julien Hubert Champagne (born January 23, 1877) and Fulcanelli are compared, and show considerable similarity.[5] In any event, by 1916, Fulcanelli had accepted Canseliet, who was then only sixteen, as his first student. In 1921, he accepted the sons of Ferdinand de Leseps as students and in 1922, two more students, Jules Boucher and Gaston Sauvage. In 1925, Fulcanelli moved to 59 rue Rochechouart where he allegedly was successful in transmuting base metals into gold.[6]

In the book Beyond Painting, published in 1936, surrealist Max Ernst hints at the existence of Fulcanelli as many surrealist painters were influenced by Alchemical lore but then, even the great American occult historian Manly Palmer Hall fails to mention the Master Alchemist.[7]

In 1960, with the publication of the international bestseller The Morning of the Magicians, Pauwels and Bergier brought the mystery of the Master Alchemist into the limelight of the public eye.[8]

Fulcanelli's Master

Without overlooking the belief of some researchers that Canseliet himself could have been Fulcanelli, Canseliet believed Fulcanelli's Master was Basil Valentine, the theoretical Master in any case, for Fulcanelli's true initiator was his own wife. As Fulcanelli describes in a strange letter he practically kept as a talisman about the completion of the Great Work by someone who is presumably Basil Valentine, he also mentions his own wife: "...When my wife told me the good news" and "...my wife, with the inexplicable intuition of sensitives, had a really strange dream." In other words, when referring to something as important as the Great Work, he mentions his wife as someone important to the Magnum Opus.[9] [10] Canseliet points out the mistake made by the Abbé Villain spelling Flamel's wife's name as "Pernelle". Nicolas Flamel himself knows her as "Perrenelle" or the eternal almighty Lady of the Great Work, Mother Nature herself. According to Canseliet, she is "... La Dame par excellence."[11]

Nazi interest in Alchemy

In the 1920s Franz Tausend, the German alchemist, was involved in a gold-making project at the same time as General Erich von Ludendorff was involved in the same project presumably to help finance the Nazi Party. [12].

It is believed that on the verge of World War II, the Abwehr was in active (but fruitless) pursuit of Fulcanelli because of his alleged knowledge of the technology of nuclear weapons.

Conclusion

According to Louis Pauwels, Fulcanelli survived World War II and disappeared completely after the Liberation of Paris. Every attempt to find him failed. In August 1945, G-2 Army Intelligence asked Bergier to contact a certain Army major who was in charge of the operation of searching and discovering German research reports on atomic energy. The anonymous U. S. Army major wanted to know the whereabouts of Fulcanelli. Bergier could not say and the army major seemed satisfied Fulcanelli could not be found.[13]

Alchemy in modern times

In 1980, Glenn Seaborg transmuted several thousand atoms of bismuth into gold at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. His experimental technique, using nuclear physics, was able to remove protons and neutrons from the bismuth atoms. Seaborg's technique would have been far too expensive to enable routine manufacturing of gold, but his work is the closest achievement, so far, to the mythical Philosopher's Stone of the ancient Alchemists. Alchemy is very much alive today. [14]

Kutip

Rendez-vous à Paris

Walter Lang reports that Fulcanelli contacted Jacques Bergier (Яков Михайлович Бергёр) to warn French atomic physicist André Hellbronner of man's impending use of nuclear weapons. According to Fulcanelli, nuclear weapons had been used before against humanity, being the Abyss pandemonium as noted much later by Dr. Albert Einstein on the front page of the New York Post after the detonation of the first Hydrogen bomb in the early 50s (October 31, 1952). Dr. Hellbronner and Chevillon among others were assassinated by the Gestapo towards the end of World War II.[15]

The meeting between Jacques Bergier and Fulcanelli took place in June 1937 in a laboratory of the Gas Board in Paris. According to Neil Powell, the following is a translation of the original verbatim transcript of the rendezvous. Fulcanelli told Bergier:

"You're on the brink of success, as indeed are several other of our scientists today. Please, allow me, be very very careful. I warn you... The liberation of nuclear power is easier than you think and the radioactivity artificially produced can poison the atmosphere of our planet in a very short time, a few years. Moreover, atomic explosives can be produced from a few grains of metal powerful enough to destroy whole cities. I'm telling you this for a fact: the alchemists have known it for a very long time... "I shall not attempt to prove to you what I'm now going to say but I ask you to repeat it to M. Hellbronner: certain geometrical arrangements of highly purified materials are enough to release atomic forces without having recourse to either electricity or vacuum techniques... The secret of alchemy is this: there is a way of manipulating matter and energy so as to produce what modern scientists call 'a field of force'. The field acts on the observer and puts him in a privileged position vis-à-vis the Universe. From this position he has access to the realities which are ordinarily hidden from us by time and space, matter and energy. This is what we call the Great Work." [16]

When Bergier asked Fulcanelli about the Philosopher's Stone, the alchemist answered: "...the vital thing is not the transmutation of metals but that of the experimenter himself. It is an ancient secret that a few people rediscover each century. Unfortunately, only a handful are successful..."[17]

Aftermath

In December 1938, the German chemists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann sent a manuscript to Naturwissenschaften reporting they had detected the element barium after bombarding uranium with neutrons.[18] Lise Meitner and her nephew Otto Robert Frisch correctly interpreted these results as being nuclear fission.[19]